"Why," I said,
"I've got reserved seats on one of them for Berlin."

"You'll never get that far," he retorted.

* * * * *

The action on the Somme was well under way when one morning at daybreak,
making my way to the cookhouse, I was greeted, "Hello, Grant, hoos awa'
wi' ye, laddie? Ma sontes, but you're lookin' fine! An' damned if he
isn't a Sergeant!" It was Scotty, reinstated in our unit in his former
capacity of cook, and he had brought with him his nerve, his twinkle,
his bow legs and all. I must confess I was glad to see him, and when we
had a few minutes together he told me, with all the gusto imaginable, of
his exploits in London.

With his little eyes twinkling like pin points, he related how England
needing every available man, he was reinstated, and having observed
strict military discipline while in the camp he was, under the rule,
entitled to back pay, so that he had a year's wages coming. He obtained
leave of absence, hastened to London and procured in some manner a
British Major's uniform, in which he disported himself in first-class
hotels, restaurants and the like, receiving the homage that became a
returned fighting man, in the shape of dinner engagements, theater
invitations and drinks galore. The deception was discovered and he was
clinked for thirty days, at the end of which he was packed off to the
front lines.

He wound up by telling me that, he expected to get into the game
shortly, as he wanted to be in it when the Germans got what was coming
to them.

We were occupying at this time some splendid dugouts and trenches that
we had taken from Fritz; they were made of chalk as was also the
cookhouse. Of our battery of sixteen guns at this point my gun was
nearest to the cookhouse, and I was mightily tickled at the prospect of
having an opportunity now and again to slip in and have a drink of hot
tea, or something of the kind, with my old friend.

[Illustration: Ex-German "Pill Box" That Is Now a British Dugout]

That night I dropped in on Scotty and casually remarked that our guns
would speak shortly and I expected we would bring the German fire upon
us, as was the usual result. Scotty's voice quavered I thought, as he
asked me when we would begin. "Oh, in an hour, maybe. Have you got a sup
of hot tea, Scotty?" "No, I hae na tea, Grant; you'll get your tea at
the proper time and not before." "Well, of all the----." I couldn't find
words, and then I remembere